Cannibal Apocalypse
(PAL VHS)
(aka:Apocalypse domani,Invasion of the Flesh Hunters, 
Cannibals in the Streets, Last Hunter)
(1980)
 review by Krug Stillo

In your face horror/action violence is here for you if you want it. Dawson also directed Flesh for Frankenstein and Blood for Dracula, but the films are often credited to Paul Morrisey. Influenced by, and occasionally imitating both Fulci’s Zombie and Romero’s Dawn of the Dead, Cannibal Apocalypse is graphic, silly, exploitative fun. It is far similar to the films produced in the wake of Romero’s social comment filled classic than the cannibal subgenre suggested in its title that animated after the success of Deodato’s Cannibal Holocaust.

Opening with an American attack on a Vietnam camp where two POWs, Charlie (Giovanni Lombardo Radice, of Cannibal Ferox, House on the Edge of the Park and City of the Living Dead) and Tommy (Tony King of The Last Hunter & Sharkey’s Machine) are found feasting on a young native girl. The leader of the US squad, Hopper (ex-male model and great regular genre actor, John Saxon) is bitten by one of these madmen, driven to cannibalism by Vietnam horror. Cut to 1982, Charlie is released from an asylum. Top of his to do list is ring his old mate, Hopper. Now married and having an affair with the Lolita-like girl next door (Cinzia De Carolis from Argento’s Cat O’ Nine Tails) has began developing a taste for human flesh. Fear of becoming a member of his mate’s cannibal group, he chooses not to see Charlie. Disappointed with his friend he falls of the wagon and chomps down on a pretty girl in the local cinema.

To cut a long story short, Hopper eventually teams up with his old ‘Nam mates and they go a cannibal spree around the city, infecting all those with a rabies-like virus.

Gore highlights, courtesy of FX wizard, Giannetto De Rossi (Zombie, The Beyond, Living Dead at Manchester Morgue) include - a girl having her breast torn away and eaten, a doctor having his tongue bitten out then spat next to his dying body, a garage mechanic having his thigh sliced like a slab of beef and, the best of all, Charlie has his stomach blown through and the camera lingers on the large football sized hole in his midriff. The gore isn’t that offensive but it is excessive. The film was banned in the UK along with many other films during the Video Nasties scandal and still remains so toady.